Saturday, June 23, 2012

Welcome to Las Vegas

That first night we wandered the strip. At one point, getting lost inside Cesar's Palace, where thickly muscled men wearing gladiator attire wander about in an attempt to add atmosphere. We spend 45 minutes trying to find our way out. The Vegas strip is gaudy and obscene and completely unapologetic about it.

The next morning we breakfasted early and did a quick shopping trip before the heat of the day would make that activity, indeed any activity, uncomfortable. Oddly, we found a store in the middle of the desert that specialized in Alpaca Peruvian knits. Even though it was July, I bought Lama motif gloves. I live in Chicago, we have notoriously nasty winters and they were on sale.

Returning to the hotel I headed down to the pool. Generally when I'm lying in the sun I read. It was the first time in my life I experienced heat too intense to allow me to concentrate on the written word. I also learned, quite quickly, to get a lounge chair as close to the pool as possible, as concrete baking in the sun and bare feet do not a good combination make.

I had noticed the night before the above average muscular development of an above average number of men on the street and in the casinos, aside from the aforementioned gladiators. As I was lying by the pool, surrounded by men with monstrous pecs and biceps sporting abs you could bounce a quarter off of, one particularly well tanned specimen appeared and stripped down to a competitive bodybuilders posing suit. It then dawned on me. I had seen a poster at my gym in Chicago for a major bodybuilding competition being held in Las Vegas that weekend. Not only were the competitors and guest posers running amok through the city, but all their gym rat weightlifting friends were there as well. As if LasVegas is not surreal enough on any given day, you now had scores of massive bodybuilders thrown into the mix, not that I'm complaining.

That evening we went to what was, at least a the time, the only gay strip club in Vegas. Considering the mock glamour of the casinos the bar was rather seedy. Considering the large amount of muscle on display in town that weekend the strippers were, by comparison, nothing to write home about either.

The next day was spent by the Luxor pool killing time until our midafternoon flight home, once again surrounded by the visiting hordes of musclemen. One bounces his pec's to impress his girlfriend, another hikes up a leg of his shorts to flex his quads. Just another day in Vegas.